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Monday, November 21, 2011

A touch of the blues...

Hello lovelies!

So, today I have a blue crackle to show you, from the Sally Hansen Crackle Overcoat range.

I was fortunate enough to get accepted into a VIP review run by my favourite beauty website, Primped, and they sent out a blue shatter, called Distressed Denim, and a greigy colour, called Slick Slate, for me to review. I was pretty excited to receive the blue crackle because I already own a black and a silver shatter from OPI (which I'll review soon), and it was wonderful to get a coloured crackle to play with. Plus, I'd been hearing good things about the SH crackle and couldn't wait to try it!

Now, I wouldn't necessarily have paired a deep blue/navy crackle with a greigy undercoat, so I decided to try it with my pale, pastel mint polish from Essence Cosmetics (called You Belong To Me).

The Essence colours are quite lovely, and go on quite well for pastels, but I do feel they look best with 3 coats if they're worn on their own. As I was pairing mine with the crackle, however, I just did two coats (plus I was rushing to get out of the house to meet friends - am I the only one whose polish chips just as I'm about to step out the door?!).

So here we go; first up, photos of the Essence polish. You can see a bit of visible nail layer (VNL), but it looks fine worn under the crackle.

Next, I applied a thin layer of the Sally Hansen Distressed Denim crackle over it. I experimented a bit and decided I liked the way the thin layers looked as opposed to the thick layers. I will say the crackle works a bit differently from my OPI shatters, but I quite liked the way it looked anyway! I'd say the crackle has a mind of its own, each finger came out differently although I used the same application technique and relatively same amount with each finger!

Here are the photos:

So what do you think? Would you be keen on trying a coloured crackle polish out? I actually really liked this... I was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. When I first opened it, I was taken aback by the tiny brush and relatively runny consistency of the crackle polish, but it applies really well! I finished off the manicure with my OPI top coat and some OPI drip dry drops to help the polish dry quicker. Now, to get my hands on some of the other colours in the range, like fuschia shock and antiqued gold... ;)

Hope you enjoyed the post! It's been two days so far and it's wearing quite well (despite having soaked my hands in lots of water today), with no obvious chipping!

wow your nails are sooo long!mine used to be really long too but I've been keeping them shorter coz I was on holiday and didn't want to worry about them too much but I'm actually really liking shorter nails, less worries, plus darker colours look better. less goth heheh :P

that's incredible! my nails grow quite fast, but I have really short nail beds so they always look shorter than they actually are, and when people see them from underneath they're always like oh woah hahah :P

xKMS, thank you so much! I have no idea, I tried to look for a price without much luck, and I checked out the display at my local Target but they didn't seem to have it stocked! I was wondering if perhaps they aren't available in Australia as yet?

Swooping buzzards, thank you! They aren't as long as they look, I think it's because I have long nail beds so they always look longer than they really are...they grow pretty quickly, I had these filed down about a week before.

The Made Up Maiden is a Melbourne based beauty blog written by Nalini, a young professional with a great love for all beauty products (but is especially fixated on makeup, nail polish and fragrances).
Working in a male dominated industry by day, she moonlights as a beauty blogger by night, and is always on the lookout for new products to fall in love with! She loves exercising her creative side by showcasing various makeup and nail art looks on the blog.